I wrote this movie review last year, for a potential movie review gig. It’s about that time of the year again…so I thought I’d share:

“Attics are awful and lovely.
You Know what I mean?
Basements are low, dank, and darksome,
Halloween’s buried there . . .”

“. . . There the terror is pure.
There an All Hallows grave
Can save souls that might smother
From calm dad or sweet mother.”
—Ray Bradbury, “In-Between: A Halloween Poem”

Ray Bradbury is a storyteller who knows why Halloween, spooks, and frights are important—so is Tim Burton, and he beautifully illustrates the point in his mismatched holiday classic, The Nightmare Before Christmas, now re-released in theaters, for the second year, in 3D. Certainly, the denizens of Halloweentown know, singing, “Life’s no fun without a good scare.”

The story is simplistic, but the best fairytales are. Jack Skellington, the monarch of Halloween, grows bored with scares and screams and seeing the new challenges and excitement of Christmas, commands his subjects to help him take over the execution of that holiday. Not plot driven, Nightmare is a heady visual draught, a Halloween dream woven in images and moods. Roger Ebert praised the original release of the film, saying its creators “made a world here that is as completely new as the worlds we saw for the first time in such films as Metropolis, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or Star Wars.” And indeed, the visuals are so unique that “Burtonesque” is now in the cinema lexicon. The new 3D element makes this phantasmal world even more immersive.

Burton has stated that inspiration came to him at a store changing out the Halloween merchandise for Christmas displays: the juxtaposition of ghouls and Santa—and the best images of the film are the ones mixing Christmas and Halloween, the delightful and the ghastly: a coffin shaped sleigh led by skeletal reindeer, Christmas lights strung about an electric chair, and in no other movie have I seen a character try and discover the true meaning of Christmas by dissecting a teddy bear.

This is what Burton does; he mixes horror and humor and somehow makes it innocent through his favorite medium, the misfit. These elements come together in one of my favorite scenes: Sally, an animated rag doll and secret admirer of Jack, prepares a gift basket for the Pumpkin King and makes ready to escape her abusive creator. Opening the window, she looks wistfully towards Jack’s house, then jumps, crashing several stories below, her body breaking into pieces. Then, just as wistfully, the way a lovesick teenager might pick petals off a lily, she sews herself back together and heads for Jack’s. It’s a neat bit of dialogue-free storytelling. In any other movie, this would have been a tragic scene—a teen suicide for unrequited love. Instead, Burton makes the scene sweet and he does so using the very element that makes it macabre: the fact that Sally is an undead doll that can put herself back together.

Forgiving the simple plot, I have only one complaint: at 76 minutes, I would have liked a little longer to further develop Jack and Sally’s relationship or maybe better develop the villain, Oogie Boogie. I would attribute the short runtime to the extensive and tedious process used to create the stop motion animation (a week’s worth of work reaped only a minute’s worth of film).

After 14 years, the film has aged well, looking dated neither technically nor in style. Actually, pop culture has caught up to its sardonic and subversive tones. For proof, note that the film was originally released under Touchstone Pictures (a division of Disney) for fear that it was too dark for children. In the 2006 3D release (as well as this year), The Nightmare Before Christmas was shown under the Disney banner. For further proof, walk into a Spencer’s or Hot Topic store—there is more Nightmare merchandise circulating than ever and a whole new generation of teenagers have made its cast of monsters into a misfit pantheon (with Jack Skellington at the head).

The media is faster and more fickle than ever. However we also live in a time when canceled TV shows and sleeper films can find a second life, resurrected by the necromancy of cult fans and DVD sales. People walk around with T-shirts featuring their favorite characters from 80s video games. Media fades, but iconic images endure, and Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas is teeming with them.

I wish the White Hen building would sprout giant chicken legs and run away like a Russian fairy tale.

I dislike most every inch of it. I hate working 50+ hours a week, just to barely make my minimum loan payments. I hate being at the mercy of every creep and looser that comes out of Island Lake’s cracks in the wee hours (and there are a lot of cracks…oh there are some nice late night misfits, and we can smell our own, but there are plenty of carbon based life forms I could do without on this gig). Stories of what happened to other night shift people who got robbed at many of the surrounding White Hen’s doesn’t help (I suppose I’m lucky the cops visit mine so regularly). But even worse than that…I’ve been missing out on a lot lately—had to skip out early on a good friend’s wedding reception—missed the double feature of Psycho and The Birds at the outdoor theater—and tonight is the last meeting of Twilight Tales at The Red Lion Pub…and I’m missing it.

The Red Lion, a building with a lot of ghosts, a lot of memories, built in 1880, and chalked full of creaky, precarious charm, is receiving renovations…but not just renovations…they’re tearing up the whole building and rebuilding it from the ground up. I know the Red Lion will be back…I know I’ll still get to read at Twilight Tales (they’re temporarily moving to another location)…but I’ll miss the old Red Lion. I spend enough time in safe, modern buildings…I want to drink rum and beer and read ghost stories in a place that speaks and creaks, under the beer garden tree, over a congress of very large, and by now very literary, rats.

Bah.Medieval TimesAs far as I can tell, the Medieval Times gig did not pan out. My little sister got a call back over a week ago and will be doing further auditions…but I haven’t heard anything.

Alas…and all that.

However, breath expended to cheer me up would be better spent wishing my little sis luck.Auxiliary Escape PodsI’m sure there must be another way to escape this White Hen. The problem is it sucks up so much of my time…it’s hard to take the time to make the escape—this convenience store is like a nasty, self-fulfilling prophecy…one that sells tasty sandwiches and burnt coffee.

I’m applying, near every day, for various teaching, tutoring, and writing type positions. Haven’t heard anything back yet.

Hyena In My ThroatWhite Hen did afford me a moment of amusement. I was working, per usual, when a couple of college-age guys came in the convenience store. They made their purchase, looked at me, did a double take, and one of them said:

“Dude. Dude! OK. I’ve got two questions. First, have you ever seen the movie, Clerks? And—”

“Yes,” I interrupted, “And I know what the second question is, and yes.”

“Dude!”

I then gave them an abbreviated story of the Halloweens and events that Nick and I went as Jay and Silent Bob—how we won several hundred dollars at a costume contest and how dressing like the duo even got us on stage with Jenna Jameson once upon a time. They were impressed, thanked me, and took their purchases and were about to leave…when the guy who spoke up originally suddenly stiffened. I could almost hear the gears turning and saw the light bulb over the head flicker precariously, the wattage far exceeding the fortitude of the filament. He was in the throes of an epiphany. He turned around, came back and delivered it unto me…

“Dude, do you not find it ironic that someone who looks like Silent Bob now works as a . . . . clerk?”

Sometimes, despite ourselves, we laugh. Hard.Autumn RitualsI’ve developed a ritual of sorts, over the last two weeks.

By the end of a graveyard shift at the Hen, my back and feet hurt. A lot. I’m more of a shower person…but I’ve started soaking in the tub after most shifts. But with so little spare time…I hate to waste it…I wanted to validate it somehow. Absorbing stories is enough validation for my time so I started bringing the I-Pod with me. I soak in lava hot water, turn the lights out, and sit in sense deprivation, in a warm womb of audio fiction via the head-phones.

In the dark of Sunday morning, not feeling like drawing a bath, I felt like something different, to celebrate the coming of my one day off and October (or rather, October’s Eve). I grabbed my coat and fedora to keep warm, sat in the back yard, and smoked rum-dipped cigarillos, and listened to some of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked this Way Comes (a quintessential October story) and stared into the forest until it stared back…or the sun rose…

I don’t remember which happened first.

Ghost Stories at the BogI’ll make another post on this, with more details, tomorrow—but on Saturday, October 13th, there will be professional storytellers telling ghost tales at Volo Bog. It’s a very fun event. I’ll likely be going and I’ll likely make reservations come Thursday. If you want to come, let me know, and I’ll reserve a spot.

Bubble, bubble—I’d wish for a little less toil and a lot less trouble . . .

But all in all and my laboratory is back in working order. The flesh and limbs and mortal clay are all back on their shelves and in their jars and viscera soups. My tools are each in their place, shining and humming and sparking. And I think I’m ready to get back to work on the quivering thing on the vivisection table.

Yes, I’ve made the transition from my dying PC to a brand new MAC. I just barely got out alive too . . . as on my last trip back to my ailing computer, to get the last little bit of data to transfer, and it would not start. Now it is dead. But we discovered it was a registered organ doner and some of its innards now reside in my brother’s computer.

I’m mostly acclimated to the i-mac now and mostly like it.

Best of all, I just bought an awesome new bit of creative writing software . . . it’s called SCRIVENER. Check it out. It deserves it’s own blog entry…at a later date.

I’m a Brilliant Future

Looks like I’m a Brilliant Future. Go ahead. Give it a click. See. Growing up, I was a poor gang banger from the projects . . . but someone gave me a chance—and look at me now!

Te-he . . . I am flattered that they thought of me (though a much better picture of me is summoned up if you click the link at the bottom of that page).

Also, I’ve been emailed some interview questions for an article on me that will appear in the UIS development magazine (name still pending).

Representing hard for the UIS yo!

AEON

Black envelopes marked in colored ink get my attention.

I just got an invite to an invite only event at my favorite café, CAFÉ AEON, and I’m quite excited. They have a new website to boot.

Something Wicked . . .

I can feel the shift in season, the trip wire is tripped, by the trip-trap of autumn. Memories like the smell of cider, pumpkin pie, and the sticky-sweat seal of a rubber mask are the phantom limb itch in my head. So, I knew it was the right time to start listening to the audio recording of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. Ray knows autumn better than anyone. He knows why monsters under the bed are important to child development. I had a water bed growing up—no spaced underneath, no room for anything to hide. Incidentally, my college writing teacher/mentor, Nancy Perkins, is convinced that, that is the reason I write what I write . . . to make up for lost time.
Of Comic Books and Kenning

For you epic literature fans, check out the rated R trailer for the new BEOWULF movie.

I can’t wait. I especially like the part where Beowulf is spouting off his descriptive nick names: “I am ripper, tearer, slasher. I am the teeth in the darkness!” That sort of comic book/hero contrivance where they say “I am the shadow in the night,” or some such—it’s actually from the ancient tradition of epics and mythology, the magic of formulaic naming disciplines like kenning and epithets.

There are different types in different cultures…but they all come down to giving clever nick names for a person, place, or thing. You could just take an appropriate verb and turn it into a noun to describe something—Beowulf is “Ripper!”

Or maybe a deed becomes the name of the person—“I am Cyclops Slayer!”

Or maybe you get a little more poetic—“I am the teeth in the darkness.”

And sometimes these become set formulas for referring to famous figures…like in mythology. Gods get many different names…or different descriptors attached to that name…and sometimes you use one so that your reader/listener knows what aspect of the god you refer to. You might call Odin, “Gallows god” or “Glad-of-War.” You might call Loki, “Wolf Father” or “Sky Strider.”

Kenning gets really formulaic. It’s a system of putting two or more words together to give them a combined meaning that neither word had before—for example—one of my favorite is “bait-gallows” which means “hook.”

But then kenning gets even cooler and more deceptively complex—because you can layer it. Let’s say a pirate strides up to me, and like some ancient, Norse poem spinner, I want to call him by kenning rather than his usual name. I might call him “Hook-Wrist.” And that might catch on (because kenning is simple and descriptive and it catches on just like nick names in high school)…

…but if I am a master kenning slinger, I might layer the kenning. I can take those two words and use kenning on each of them (and we go to four words). For example, the kenning for hook (as we said) is “bait-gallows.” The kenning for wrist is “wolf’s-joint” (this is an allusion to the Norse myth where the god Tyr’s hand is bitten off by the demon wolf Fenrir).

So now the pirate’s kenning name becomes “Bait-Gallows-Wolf’s-Joint.” Someone who knows their kenning could break that down and know that I’m really saying “Hook-Wrist” and deduce that the pirate I’m talking about has a hook for a hand. But even if not…it’s a fucking cool name. It’s a conversation starter. The pirate, let’s say his real name is Bob, would probably thank me for the bit of poetry I’ve blessed him with.

On that same line, I might be a Viking who finds himself lost in Egypt (worm-holes can happen to anyone) and I see the crazy hooked swords of the ancient middle east ( the kopesh). Seeing these strange, sickle shaped swords, I might call them “Hook-Sword”…or “Bait-Gallows-Blood-Worm” (“blood-worm” means “sword”).

And this takes us to the ultimate conclusion of this post . . .

Who wants to join me and start a band called Bait-Gallows-Blood-Worm?

And finally, A CHALLENGE TO THE READER: I’m curious what someone might use as kenning to refer to themself…click on the above links, read up on it, and then reply to this post with your own kennings. If anyone replies, I’ll join in the fun too.